


Tom Gaunt and the Scarlet Stone

by minaviolet



Series: Incomplete Works [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 15:10:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3138866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minaviolet/pseuds/minaviolet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strike>Harry Potter</strike> Tom Gaunt has known nothing but a cupboard and working for his relatives who hate him, the <strike>Dursleys</strike> Rigbys. But all that's about to change...<br/>THIS FIC IS UP FOR ADOPTION, NO PERMISSION NEEDED.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Boy Who Lived

Mr. and Mrs. Rigby, of Number seven, Pricket Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly ordinary, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything odd or mysterious, because they simply did not condone such nonsense.

Mr. Rigby was the director of a company called Chortens, which sold houses. He was a tall, sticklike man with an exceedingly long neck, and a large mustache.

Mrs. Rigby was wide, brunette and had almost no neck, which was a bit of a problem as she spent much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Rigbys had a small son by the name of Ridgley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.

The Rigbys lived their dream life, but they had a secret, and their greatest fear was that it would be discovered—they didn’t think they could stand it if anyone found out about the Gaunts.

Mrs. Gaunt was Mrs. Rigby’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Rigby pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her ne’er-do-well of a husband were as unRigbyish as it was possible to be.

The Rigbys shuddered to think what the neighbors would say if the Gaunts arrived in the street. The Rigbys knew that the Gaunts had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Gaunts away; they didn’t want Ridgley mixing with a child like that.

Our story begins on a dull, gray Tuesday morning, when Mr. and Mrs. Rigby were waking. There was naught about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious occurances would soon be happening all over the country.

Mr. Rigby hummed to himself as he picked out his most boring suit for work, and Mrs. Rigby gossiped away on the phone as she wrestled a screaming Ridgley into his high chair.

None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window.

At half past eight, Mr. Rigby picked up his briefcase and pecked Mrs. Rigby on the cheek. He then attempted to kiss Ridgley good-bye but missed, because Ridgley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls.

“Little tyke,” chuckled Mr. Rigby as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of Number seven’s drive.

It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something extremely peculiar—a grey fox reading a map. For a second, Mr. Rigby didn’t realize what he had seen—then he jerked his head around to look again. There wasn’t anything there.

What could a fox possibly have been doing on a street corner anyway? And reading a map of all things? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr. Rigby blinked and turned around.

As Mr. Rigby drove around the corner and up the road, he watched his mirror. Suddenly, he saw the fox again—it was reading the sign that said Pricket Drive—no, no, what was he thinking? Foxes could not read, or hold maps.

Mr. Rigby shook his head and put the fox out of his mind. As he drove toward town he thought of nothing except a group of very nice houses he was expecting to sell that day.

But on the edge of town, houses were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks.

Mr. Rigby could not bear people who dressed in strange clothes—the getups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdoes standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together.

Mr. Rigby was enraged to see that a couple of them weren’t young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr. Rigby that this was probably some silly stunt—these people were likely collecting for something...

Of course, that would be it. The traffic moved on and a few minutes later, Mr. Rigby arrived in the Chortens parking lot, his mind back on houses.

Mr. Rigby always sat with his back to the window in his office on the sixth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on houses that morning.

He didn’t see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime.

Mr. Rigby, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at four different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunchtime, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the bakery.

He’d forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know why, but they made him uneasy. This bunch were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large croissant in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were saying.

“The Gaunts, that’s right…that’s what I heard…yes, their son, Tom…”

Mr. Rigby froze. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but thought better of it.

He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone, and had almost finished dialing his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his mustache, thinking...

No, he was being foolish. Gaunt wasn't that unusual a name. Tom was a very common name as well—he hadn’t heard all the whispers, the Tom they’d been talking about wasn’t necessarily a Gaunt.

Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Tom. He’d never even seen the boy. It might have been Todd. Or Toby.

There was no point in worrying Mrs. Rigby; she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her—if he’d had a sister like that...but all the same, those people in cloaks...

He found it a lot harder to concentrate on houses that afternoon and when he left the building at five o’clock. He was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door.

“Sorry,” he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr. Rigby realized that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground.

On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passersby stare, “Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for naught could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy day!”

And the old man hugged Mr. Rigby around the middle and walked off.

Mr. Rigby stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that could be. Rattled, he hurried to his car and set off for home hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he did not approve of imagination.

As he pulled into the driveway of Number seven, the first thing he saw—and it didn’t improve his mood—was the grey fox he’d spotted that morning. It sat now on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; how many grey foxes could there be in one area?

“Shoo!” said Mr. Rigby loudly. The fox didn’t move. It just gave him an annoyed glance. _Was this normal behavior for a fox?_ Mr. Rigby wondered. Attempting to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife.

Mrs. Rigby had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs. Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Ridgley had learned a new word (“Shan’t!”). Mr. Rigby tried to act normally.

When Ridgley had been put to bed, he went into the living room in time to catch the last report on the evening news:

“And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.” The newscaster allowed himself a grin.

“Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of owls tonight, Jim?”

“Well, Marius,” said the weatherman, “I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire, and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early—it’s not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.”

Mr. Rigby sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain?

Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place?

And a whisper, a whisper about the Gaunts...

Mrs. Rigby came into the living room carrying two cups of tea. It was futile—he’d have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. “Ah, Mary, dear—you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?”

As he had expected, Mrs. Rigby looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister.

“No,” she said sharply. “Why?”

“Strange happenings on the news,” Mr. Rigby mumbled. “Owls...shooting stars...and there were a mighty amount of odd-looking people in town today...”

“And?” snapped Mrs. Rigby.

“Well…I thought, maybe...maybe, it was something to do with, you know... _her_ crowd.”

Mrs. Rigby sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr. Rigby wondered whether he dared tell her he’d heard the name “Gaunt.” He decided he didn’t dare. Instead he said, as casually as he could, “Their son—he would be around Ridgley’s age now, wouldn’t he?”

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Rigby stiffly.

“What’s his name again? Tobias, isn’t it?”

“Tom. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Rigby, his heart sinking horribly. “Yes, I quite agree.”

He didn’t say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed.

While Mrs. Rigby was in the bathroom, Mr. Rigby crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The fox was still there.

It was staring down Pricket Drive as though it were waiting for something.

Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Gaunts? If it did...if it got out that they were related to a pair of—well, he didn’t know how he could bear it.

The Rigbys got into bed. Mrs. Rigby fell asleep quickly but Mr. Rigby lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Gaunts were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs. Rigby.

The Gaunts knew very well what he and Mary thought about them and their kind....He couldn’t see how he and Mary could get mixed up in anything that might be going on—he yawned and turned over—it couldn’t affect them....

How very wrong he was.

Mr. Rigby might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the fox on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Pricket Drive.

It didn’t even quiver when a car door slammed on the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the fox moved at all.

A man appeared on the corner the fox had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The fox’s tail twitched and its eyes narrowed.

Nothing like this man had ever been seen on Pricket Drive. He was tall, thin, and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak that swept the ground, and high-heeled, buckled boots.

His blue eyes were light, bright, and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore.

Albus Dumbledore did not seem to realize that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome.

He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realize he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the fox, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street.

For some reason, the sight of the fox seemed to amuse him.  He chuckled and muttered, “I should have known.”

He found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air, and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again—the next lamp flickered into darkness.

Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left on the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the fox watching him.

If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs. Rigby, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement.

Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street toward Number seven, where he sat down on the wall next to the fox. He didn’t look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it.

“Fancy seeing you here, Professor Greengrass.”

He turned to smile at the fox, but it had vanished. Instead, he was smiling at a rather aristocratic woman. She, too, was wearing a cloak, a sapphire one. Her blond hair was drawn into a tightly braided bun. She looked distinctly ruffled.

“How did you know it was I?” she asked.

“My dear Professor, I’ve never seen a fox sit so stiffly.”

“You would be stiff as well, had you been sitting on a brick wall for a day,” said Professor Greengrass.

“A day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.”

Professor Greengrass sniffed in irritation.

“Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all right,” she said impatiently.

“You would think they would have the sense to be a bit more careful, especially after—but no, even the Muggles have noticed something’s amiss. It was on their news.” She jerked her head back at the Rigbys’ dark living-room window.

“I heard them. Flocks of owls...shooting stars....Honestly, they’re not blind. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent—I’m sure that was Icarus Diggle. He never did have much sense.”

“You can’t blame them,” said Dumbledore gently. “We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.”

“I understand that,” said Professor Greengrass irritably. “But that is no excuse to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle clothes, swapping rumors.”

She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn’t, so she went on.

“The epitome of irony it would be, if, on the very day You-Know-Who seems to have stopped plaguing us at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really is gone, Dumbledore?”

“It certainly seems so,” said Dumbledore. “We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a lemon drop?”

“Pardon me?”

“A lemon drop. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather fond of”

“No, thank you,” said Professor Greengrass coldly, as though she didn’t think this was the moment for lemon drops. “As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone—”

“My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this ‘You-Know-Who’ nonsense—for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Vromikos.”

Professor Greengrass flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two lemon drops, seemed not to notice. “It all gets so confusing if we keep saying ‘You-Know-Who.’ I have never seen any reasonto be frightened of saying Vromikos’s name.

“Of course you haven’t,” said Professor Greengrass, sounding half exasperated, half admiring. “But you have well near naught to fear—it is well-known that you are the single wizard You-Know—oh fine, Vromikos, feared.”

“You flatter me,” said Dumbledore calmly. “Vromikos had powers I will never have.”

“Simply because you are far too Light to use them.”

“It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.”

Professor Greengrass shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, “The owls are nothing next to the rumors flying around. Have you heard what they’re all saying? About why he has disappeared? About what finally defeated him?”

It seemed that Professor Greengrass had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold, hard wall all day, for neither as a fox nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now.

It was clear she would not believe what “everyone” was saying until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another lemon drop and did not answer.

“What they are saying,” she continued, “is that last night Vromikos appeared in Sala’s Glade. He went to find the Gaunts. The rumor is that Tamsyn and Merop Gaunt are—are, that—that they-re—dead. “

Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor Greengrass gasped.

“Tamsyn and Merop…no…I can’t believe it…it can’t be….”

Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. “I know...I know...” he said heavily.

Professor Greengrass’s voice trembled as she went on. “That’s not all. They’re saying he tried to kill the Gaunt’s son, Tom. But—he couldn’t. He couldn’t kill that child. No one knows why, or how, but they’re saying that when he couldn’t kill Tom Gaunt, Vromikos somehow lost his power—and that is why he is gone.”

Dumbledore nodded glumly.

“It’s—it’s true?” faltered Professor Greengrass. “After all he’s done...all the people he’s killed...he couldn’t kill a child? It’s just impossible...but how in the name of Merlin did Tom survive?”

“We can only guess,” said Dumbledore. “We may never know.”

Professor Greengrass pulled out a lace handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes quickly. Dumbledore gave a great sniff as he took a golden watch from his pocket and examined it. It was a very odd watch.

It had twelve hands but no numbers; instead, little planets were moving around the edge. It must have made sense to Dumbledore, though, because he put it back in his pocket and said, “Hagrid’s late. I suppose it was he who told you I’d be here, by the way?”

“Yes,” said Professor Greengrass. “And I don’t suppose you’ll tell me why you are here, of all places?”

“I’ve come to bring Tom to his aunt and uncle. They’re the only family he has left now.”

“You can’t possibly mean the people who live here?” cried Professor Greengrass, jumping to her feet and pointing at Number seven.

“You can’t, Dumbledore. I’ve been watching them all day. You couldn’t find two people who are less like us. And their son—I saw him kicking his mother all the way up the street, screaming for sweets. Tom Gaunt come and live here!”

“It’s the best place for him,” said Dumbledore firmly. “His aunt and uncle will be able to explain everything to him when he’s older. I’ve written them a letter.”

“A letter?” repeated Professor Greengrass indignantly, sitting back down on the wall. “Dumbledore, you can’t possibly think you can explain all this in a letter? These people—they will never understand him! He’ll be famous—a legend, there will be books written about Tom—every child in our world will know his name, and you send him off to be raised with Muggles?”

“Exactly,” said Dumbledore, looking very seriously over the top of his half-moon glasses. “It would be enough to turn any boy’s head. Famous before he can walk and talk! Famous for something he won’t even remember! Can’t you see how much better off he’ll be, growing up away from all that until he’s ready to take it?”

Professor Greengrass opened her mouth, changed her mind, swallowed, and then said, “Alright—alright, I understand. But how will the boy be getting here, Dumbledore?” She eyed his cloak suddenly as though she thought he might be hiding Tom underneath it.

“Hagrid’s bringing him.”

“You think it wise to trust Hagrid with something as important as this?”

I would trust Hagrid with my life,” said Dumbledore.

“I don’t deny that his heart is in the right place,” said Professor Greengrass grudgingly, “but careful he is not. He does tend to—what was that?”

A low rumbling sound had broken the silence around them. It grew steadily louder as they looked up and down the street for some sign of a headlight; it swelled to a roar as they both looked up at the sky—and a huge motorcycle fell out of the air and landed on the road in front of them.

If the motorcycle was huge, it was naught to the man sitting astride it.

He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild—long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins. In his vast, muscular arms he was holding a bundle of blankets.

“Hagrid,” said Dumbledore, sounding relieved. “At last. And where did you get that motorcycle?”

“Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore, sit,” said the giant, climbing carefully off the motorcycle as he spoke. “Young Alphard Black lent it to me. I’ve got him, sir.”

“No problems, were there?”

“No, sir—house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin’ around. He fell asleep as we was flyin’ over Bristol.”

Dumbledore and Professor Greengrass bent forward over the bundle of blankets. Inside, just visible, was a baby boy, fast asleep. Under a tuft of jet-black hair over his forehead they could see a curiously shaped cut, like a bolt of lightning.

“Is that—?” whispered Professor Greengrass.

“Yes,” said Dumbledore. “He’ll have that scar forever.”

“Could you not do anything about it, Dumbledore?”

“Even if I could, I wouldn’t. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground. Well—give him here, Hagrid—we’d better get this over with.”

Dumbledore took Tom in his arms and turned toward the Rigbys’ house.

“Could I—could I say good-bye to him, sir?” asked Hagrid. He bent his great, shaggy head over Tom and gave him what must have been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss. Then, suddenly, Hagrid let out a howl like a wounded dog.

“Hush!” hissed Professor Greengrass, “the Muggles will wake!”

“S-s-sorry,” sobbed Hagrid, taking out a large, spotted handkerchief and burying his face in it. “But I c-c-can’t stand it—Tamsyn an’ Merop dead—an’ poor little Tom off ter live with Muggles—”

“I understand, I do, but do control yourself, Hagrid, or we’ll be found,” Professor Greengrass whispered, patting Hagrid gingerly on the arm as Dumbledore stepped over the low garden wall and walked to the front door.  He laid Tom gently on the doorstep, took a letter out of his cloak, tucked it inside Tom’s blankets, and then came back to the other two.

For a full minute the three of them stood and looked at the little bundle; Hagrid’s shoulders shook, Professor Greengrass blinked rapidly, and the twinkling light that usually shone from Dumbledore’s eyes seemed to have gone out.

“Well,” said Dumbledore finally, “that’s that. We’ve no business staying here. We may as well go and join the celebrations.”

“Yeah,” said Hagrid in a very muffled voice, “I’ll be takin’ Alphard his bike back. G’night, Professor Greengrass—Professor Dumbledore, sir.”

Wiping his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the motorcycle and kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose into the air and off into the night.

“I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor Greengrass,” said Dumbledore, nodding to her. Professor Greengrass sniffed in reply.

Dumbledore turned and walked back down the street. On the corner he stopped and took out the silver Put-Outer.

He clicked it once, and twelve balls of light sped back to their street lamps so that Pricket Drive glowed suddenly orange and he could make out a grey fox slinking around the corner at the other end of the street. He could just see the bundle of blankets on the step of Number seven.

“Good luck, Tom,” he murmured. He turned on his heel and with a swish of his cloak, he was gone.

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Pricket Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen.

Tom Gaunt rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, and not knowing he would be woken in a few hours’ time by Mrs. Rigby’s scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Ridgley...He couldn’t know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: “To Tom Gaunt—the boy who lived!”


	2. The Vanishing Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~~Harry~~ Tom goes to the zoo, and talks to ~~a snake~~ wolves.

Pricket Drive had hardly changed at all in the ten years that had passed since the Rigbys had woken up to find their nephew on the front step.

The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number seven on the Rigbys’ front door; sunlight crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Rigby had seen that fateful news report about the owls.

Only the photographs on the mantelpiece showed how much time had really passed. Ten years ago, there had been a multitude of pictures depicting what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-colored bonnets.

But Ridgley Rigby was no longer a baby, and the photographs now showed a large brunette boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, and being hugged and kissed by his mother.

None of the pictures showed any sign of another boy living in the house.

Yet Tom Gaunt was still there, asleep at the moment, but not for long. His Aunt Mary was awake and it was her screechy voice that made the first noise of the day.

“Up! Up! Now!”

Tom woke with a start. His aunt rapped on the door again.

“Up!” she screeched. Tom heard her steps heading towards the kitchen and the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove. He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having.

It had been a good one, in comparison to the usual dreams of green lights. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. He had the oddest feeling he’d had the same dream before.

Suddenly, he heard his aunt stomping back towards his door.

“Are you up yet?” she demanded.

Tom didn’t deign to respond, as it really wouldn’t put her in a good mood anyways.

“Get a move on! You’re to look after the bacon. And don’t you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Ridgey’s birthday.”

Tom restrained the urge to groan.

“Well?” his aunt snapped through the door.

“I know, I’m coming…”

Ridgley’s birthday—how could he forget? As if the boy didn’t shriek about it for days beforehand…

Tom slowly crawled out of bed and started searching for socks. Finding a pair under his bed, he pulled a spider off one of them and put them on. Tom was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he roomed.

When he was dressed he went down the hall into the kitchen. The table was dwarfed by all of Ridgley’s birthday presents. Ridgley seemed to have gotten the new computer he’d wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike.

Exactly why Ridgley wanted a racing bike was beyond Tom, as Ridgley was overweight and despised exercise—unless, of course, it involved punching somebody. Ridgley’s favorite punching bag was Tom, though he usually couldn’t catch him.

Tom didn’t look it, but he was pretty fast. Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Tom had always been very runty for his age. He looked even smaller than he actually was because all of his clothes were hand-me-downs of Ridgley’s, and Ridgley was about four times bigger than he was.

Tom had a thin face, black hair, and deep blue eyes. He had a slightly crooked nose because of all the times Ridgley punched him in the face. The one thing Tom liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead shaped like a bolt of lightning.

He’d had it for as long as he could remember, and the one of the very first questions he’d asked his Aunt Mary was how he had gotten it.

“In the car crash where your deadbeat parents died,” she had said. “And don’t ask questions.”

Don’t ask questions—that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Rigbys.

Uncle Hoyt entered the kitchen as Tom was turning over the bacon.

“Comb your hair!” he barked, by way of a morning greeting.

Tom was frying eggs by the time Ridgley arrived in the kitchen with his mother. Ridgley took a lot after his mother. He had a large pink face, not much neck, small, beady brown eyes, and thick brunette hair that lay smoothly on his thick, fat head. Aunt Mary often said that Ridgley looked like a little angel—Tom often thought that Ridgley looked like a baby hippo.

Tom put the plates of egg and bacon on the table, which was difficult as there wasn’t much room. Ridgley, meanwhile, was counting his presents.

His face fell.

“Thirty-seven,” he said, looking up at his mother and father. “That’s two less than last year.”

“Darling, you haven’t counted Auntie Mae’s present, see, it’s here under this big one from Mommy and Daddy.”

“All right, thirty-eight then,” said Ridgley, going red in the face.

Tom sensed a huge Ridgley tantrum coming and began wolfing down his bacon as fast as possible in case Ridgley turned the table over.

Aunt Mary obviously scented danger, too, because she said quickly,

“And we’ll buy you another two presents while we’re out today. How’s that, muffin? Two more presents. Is that all right?”

Ridgley scrunched up his face in thought. Thinking seemed to be very hard work for him. Finally he said slowly, “So I’ll have thirty—thirty...”

“Forty, cupcake,” said Aunt Mary.

“Oh.” Ridgley sat down with a thump and grabbed the nearest parcel. “All right then.”

Uncle Hoyt chuckled. “Little tyke wants his money’s worth, just like his father. ‘Atta boy, Ridgley!” He ruffled Ridgley’s hair.

At that moment the telephone rang and Aunt Mary went to answer it while Tom and Uncle Hoyt watched Ridgley unwrap a racing bike, a video camera, a remote control airplane, sixteen new computer games, and a VCR.

He was ripping the paper off a gold wristwatch when Aunt Mary came back from the telephone looking both angry and worried.

“Bad news, Hoyt,” she said. “Mrs. Mulberry’s broken her leg. She can’t take him.” She jerked her head in Tom’s direction.

Ridgley’s mouth fell open in horror, but Tom felt a twinge of hope. Every year on Ridgley’s birthday, his parents took him and a friend out for the day, to adventure parks, hamburger restaurants, or the movies. Tom was always left behind with Mrs. Mulberry, a mad old lady who lived two streets away.

Tom hated it there. The whole house smelled of curry and Mrs. Mulberry made him look at photographs of all the cats she’d ever owned.

“Now what?” Said Aunt Mary, looking furiously at Tom as though he’d planned it all. While Tom did feel somewhat bad that Mrs. Mulberry had broken her leg, he also felt a strong sense of relief when he reminded himself it would be a whole year before he had to look at Nibbles, Cloudy, Mr. Paws, and Tuffet again.

“We could phone Mae,” Uncle Hoyt suggested.

“Don’t be silly, Hoyt, she hates the boy.”

The Rigbys often spoke about Tom like this, as though he couldn’t hear them—or rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn’t understand them, like a snail.

“What about what’s-her-name, your friend—Yvette?”

“On vacation in Mallorca,” snapped Aunt Mary.

“You could just let me stay here,” Tom put in hopefully (he’d be able to watch what he wanted on television for a change and maybe even have a go on Ridgley’s computer).

Aunt Mary looked as though she’d just swallowed a lemon.

“And come back and find the house in ruins?” she snarled.

“I won’t…,” said Tom trailed off because they weren’t listening.

“I suppose we could take him to the zoo,” said Aunt Mary slowly, “...and leave him in the car...”

“That car is new, I’m not letting him sit in there alone...”

Ridgley began to cry loudly. He wasn’t really crying—it had been years since he’d really cried—but he knew that if he screwed up his face and wailed, his mother would give him anything he wanted.

“Oh, Sugarplum, don’t cry, Mummy won’t let him spoil your special day!” she cried, flinging her arms around him.

“I...don’t...want...him...t-t-to come!” Ridgley yelled between huge, pretend sobs. “He always sp-spoils everything!” He shot Tom a nasty grin through the gap in his mother’s arms.

Just then, the doorbell rang—”Oh, good Lord, they’re here!” said Aunt Mary frantically—and a moment later, Ridgley’s best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother.

Piers was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who held people’s arms behind their backs while Ridgley hit them. Ridgley stopped pretending to cry at once.

Half an hour later, Tom, who felt that his luck might be looking up a lot, was sitting in the back of the Rigbys’ car with Piers and Ridgley, on the way to the zoo for the first time in his life. His aunt and uncle hadn’t been able to think of anything else to do with him, but before they’d left, Uncle Hoyt had taken Tom aside.

“I’m warning you, boy,” he had said, putting his skinny face right up in Tom’s, “any funny business, anything at all, and you will be in that cupboard from now ‘til Christmas.”

“I’m not going to do anything,” said Tom.

But Uncle Hoyt didn’t believe him. It seemed as if no one ever did.

The problem was, strange things often happened around Tom and telling the Rigbys he didn’t make them happen just didn’t help.

Once, Aunt Mary, tired of Tom coming back from the barbers looking as though he had never been there at all, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut his hair so short he was almost bald except for his bangs, which she left “to hide that horrid scar.”

Ridgley had laughed himself silly at Tom, who spent a sleepless night imagining school the next day, where he was already laughed at for his baggy clothes.

Next morning, however, he had gotten up to find his hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Mary had sheared it off He had been given a week in his cupboard for this, even though he had tried to explain that there was no way he could have possibly made it grow back so quickly on his own.

Another time, Aunt Mary had been trying to force him into a revolting old sweater of Ridgley’s (brown with orange puff balls). The harder she’d tried to pull it over his head, the smaller it’d become, until finally it might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly wouldn’t have fit Tom.

Aunt Mary had decided it must have shrunk in the wash and for once, Tom hadn’t been punished.

On the other hand, he’d gotten into terrible trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens. Ridgley’s gang had been chasing him as usual when, as much to Tom’s shock as anyone else’s, he found himself sitting on the chimney.

The Rigbys had received a very angry letter from Tom’s headmistress telling them Tom had been climbing school buildings. But all he’d tried to do (as he’d tried to explain to his uncle) was jump behind the big trash cans outside the kitchen doors.

Tom felt that there had been something he was missing in that whole incident, but since it really hadn’t made any sense, he assumed that maybe he’d somehow flown, and left it at that.

But today, he would make sure nothing went wrong. It was even worth being with Ridgley and Piers to be spending the day somewhere that wasn’t school, his cupboard, or Mrs. Mulberry’s curry-smelling living room.

While he drove, Uncle Hoyt complained to Aunt Mary. He liked to complain about things: people at work, Tom, the council, Tom, the bank, and Tom were just a few of his favorite subjects. This morning, it was motorcycles.

“...roaring along like maniacs, the hoodlums,” he said, as a motorcycle overtook them.

Tom suddenly recalled the dream he’d had about the flying motocycle. He stopped himself from saying anything, though, because if there was one thing the Rigbys hated even more than his asking questions, it was his talking about anything acting in a way it shouldn’t, even if it was in a dream or even a cartoon—they seemed to think he might get dangerous ideas.

It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families. The Rigbys bought Ridgley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then, because the smiling lady in the van had asked Tom what he wanted before they could hurry him away, they bought him a cheap lemon ice pop.

It wasn’t bad, either, Tom thought, licking his ice pop, as they watched a gorilla scratching its head who looked remarkably like Ridgley, all the way up to its beady little eyes and the brown fur on its head.

Tom had the best morning he’d had in a long time. He was careful to walk a little way apart from the Rigbys so that Ridgley and Piers, who were starting to get bored with the animals by lunchtime, wouldn’t fall back on their favorite hobby of hitting him.

They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Ridgley had a tantrum because his Knickerbocker glory didn’t have enough ice cream on top, Uncle Hoyt bought him another one and Tom was allowed to finish the first.

Tom felt, later, that he should have known his luck always ended up running out at some point.

After lunch they went to the wolves’ enclosure. It was cool and dark room, with two walls replaced with glass windows. Behind the glass, a pair of grey wolves slept in the midst of a grassy patch of land, surrounded by a few trees.

Ridgley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the

“Make them move,” he whined at his father. Uncle Hoyt tapped on the glass, but the wolves slept on.

“Do it again,” Ridgley ordered. Uncle Hoyt rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the wolves seemed not to have heard.

“This is boring,” Ridgley moaned. He shuffled away.

Tom moved in front of the glass and stared intently at the wolves. He didn’t really blame them for staying asleep and wouldn’t even have been surprised if they’d died of boredom—no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb them all day long.

It was as bad as having a cupboard for a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Mary hammering on the door to wake you up, or Uncle Hoyt yelling at you for another freaky thing you hadn’t done.

Suddenly, one of the wolves opened a single eye. It lifted its head and turned towards Tom. Padding towards him, it sat in front of the glass. It tilted its head then—it winked at him.

Tom stared in shock, and wondered if he was hallucinating. He looked around quickly to see if anyone else was watching, but they weren’t—they all seemed to be focused on the other animals in the enclosure.

He looked at the wolf and winked back.

The wolf turned its head and pointed its snout towards the Rigbys. Then, shaking its head, it gave what sounded like a sigh.

“I know,” Tom murmured through the glass, feeling that the wolf could somehow understand what he was saying. “It must be really annoying.”

It nodded vigorously and…barked? Or, at least, it sounded like a bark, for Tom at that moment, Tom heard a person asking, “You are a speaker?”

He turned around, but there wasn’t anyone there. Looking around, he heard the person again: “No, not there, here.”

He turned back to the wolf. Was he going crazy at last? He could have sworn the wolf was talking—talking to him. “You aren’t, and I am.”

He stared—he seemed to be doing a lot of that, lately. As he was about to respond, a deafening shout behind Tom made both of them jump.

“RIDGLEY! MR. RIGBY! COME AND LOOK AT THE WOLF! YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT IT’S DOING!”

Ridgley came waddling toward them as fast as he could.

“Out of the way, you,” he said, punching Tom in the ribs. Caught by surprise, Tom fell hard on the stone floor. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened—one second, Piers and Ridgley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror.

Tom sat up and gasped; the glass front of the wolf had vanished. The wolf and its mate had leaped out of their enclosure and were running away. People throughout the zoo screamed and started running.

As the wolves’ ran past him, he heard the same voice he’d earlier, followed by another: “Thank you.” “Forest and squirrels, here I come!”

The keeper of the enclosure was in shock.

“But the glass,” he kept saying, “where did the glass go?”

The zoo director himself made Aunt Mary a cup of strong, sweet tea while he apologized over and over again. Piers and Ridgley could only gibber. As far as Tom had seen, the wolves hadn’t done anything except snap playfully at their heels as they’d passed.

However, by the time they were all back in Uncle Hoyt’s car, Ridgley was telling them how one had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to maul him to death. But worst of all, for Tom at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, “Tom was talking to them, weren’t you, Tom?”

Uncle Hoyt waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Tom. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, “Go—cupboard—stay—no meals,” before he collapsed into a chair, and Aunt Mary had to run and get him a large brandy.

Tom lay in his dark cupboard much later, wishing he had a watch. Not knowing what time it was and whether that the Rigbys were asleep or not, he couldn’t sneaking to the kitchen for some food for a while.

He’d lived with the Rigbys for almost ten miserable years, for as long as he could remember, ever since he’d been a baby and his parents had died in a car crash.

He couldn’t remember being in the car when his parents had died, but sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and green eyes, and a burning pain on his forehead.

He supposed this was the crash, though he couldn’t understand who the eyes belonged to—he figured they might be one of his parent’s, and the green light might have come from another car.

He couldn’t remember his parents at all, besides those eyes. His aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and asking questions was forbidden of course. There were no photographs of them in the house.

When he had been younger, Tom had dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened; the Rigbys were the only family he knew.

Sometimes, though, he thought that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very odd strangers they were, too. A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Aunt Mary and Ridgley. After asking Tom furiously if he knew the man, Aunt Mary had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything.

A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to disappear the second Tom tried to get a closer look.

At school, Tom had no one. Everybody knew that Ridgley’s gang hated that odd Tom Gaunt with the crooked nose and baggy clothes, and nobody liked to disagree with Ridgley’s gang.


	3. The Letters From No One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~~Harry~~ Tom gets a bunch of letters and Uncle ~~Vernon~~ Hoyt goes mad.

The escape of the wolves earned Tom his longest-ever punishment. By the time he was allowed out of his cupboard again, the summer holidays had started and Ridgley had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and, first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs. Mulberry as she crossed Pricket Drive on her crutches.

Tom wasn’t at all glad school was over—it offered him a meager solace from the Rigbys, but it didn’t really matter as either way there was no escaping Ridgley’s gang, who visited the house every single day.

Piers, Denver, Marcus, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Ridgley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader (Tom never really understood their logic). The rest of them were all quite happy to join in Ridgley’s favorite sport: Tommy Hunting.

This was why Tom made sure to spend as much time as possible out of the house. As he wandered around thinking about the end of the holidays, he saw a tiny ray of hope. When September came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his life, he wouldn’t be with Ridgley.

Ridgley had been accepted at Uncle Hoyt’s old private school, Chafings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. Tom, on the other hand, was going to Ashwood High, the local public school. Ridgley thought this was very funny.

“They stuff people’s heads down the toilet the first day at Ashwood,” he told Tom. “Want to come upstairs and practice?”

“No, the poor toilet’s never had anything as horrible as your head down it—it might be sick,” Tom had retorted. Then he had run away, before Ridgley could work out what he’d said.

One day in July, Aunt Mary took Ridgley to London to buy his Chafings uniform, leaving Tom at Mrs. Mulberry’s. Mrs. Mulberry wasn‘t as bad as usual.

It turned out she’d broken her leg tripping over one of her cats, and she didn’t seem quite as fond of them as before. She let Tom watch television and gave him a bit of carrot cake that tasted as though she’d had it for several years.

That evening, Ridgley paraded around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Chafings‘ boys wore maroon tailcoats, puce green knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters.

They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren’t looking.  This was supposed to be good training for later life.

As he looked at Ridgley in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Hoyt said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Mary burst into tears and said she couldn’t believe it was her Ickle Ridgeykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up.

Tom didn’t trust himself to speak.  He was too busy choking on his laughter.

There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Tom went in for breakfast. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. He went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in gray water.

“What’s this?” he asked Aunt Mary. Her face turned purple as it always did if he dared to ask a question.

“Your new school uniform,” she replied.

Tom looked back at the bowl.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought it was supposed to be dry.”

“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Aunt Mary. “I’m dying some of Ridgley’s old things gray for you. It’ll look just like everyone else’s when I’ve finished.”

Tom highly doubted this, but felt it was best not to argue. He sat down at the table and tried not to think about what he’d look like on his first day at Ashwood High—probably like he was wearing pieces of elephant skin.

Ridgley and Uncle Hoyt came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Tom’s new uniform. Uncle Hoyt opened his newspaper as usual and Ridgley banged his Chafings’ stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table.

They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.

“Get the mail, Ridgley,” said Uncle Hoyt from behind his paper.

“Make Tom get it.”

“Get the mail, Tom.”

“Why?”

Tom sometimes felt the absurd need to be passive-aggressive like this.

“Poke him with your Chafing stick, Ridgley.”

Dodging the Chafing stick, he went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Hoyt’s sister Mae, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and—a letter for Tom.

Tom picked it up and stared at it, his heart beating like a drum. No one had ever, in his entire life, sent him a letter. There wasn’t anyone who could—he had no friends, no other relatives—he didn’t even belong to the library, so he’d never even gotten rude notes asking for books back.

Yet there it was, sitting innocuously on the step; a letter, addressed so plainly to Tom there could be no mistake:

Mr. T. Gaunt

The Cupboard under the Stairs

7 Pricket Drive

Little Hangleton

Surrey

The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp.

Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Tom saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a wolf, an owl, a beaver, and a fox surrounding a large letter H.

“Hurry up, boy!” shouted Uncle Hoyt from the kitchen. “What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?” He chuckled at his own joke.

Tom went back to the kitchen, still staring at his letter. He handed Uncle Hoyt the bill and the postcard, sat down, and opened the yellow envelope, while Uncle Hoyt ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard.

“Mae’s ill,” he informed Aunt Mary. “Ate a funny whelk—”

“Dad!” said Ridgley suddenly. “Dad, Tom’s got something!”

Tom was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Hoyt.

“That’s mine!” said Tom, trying to snatch it back.

“Who would be writing to you?” sneered Uncle Hoyt, shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it. His face went from pale to puce green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn’t stop there. Within seconds it was the grayish white of old porridge.

“M-M-Mary!” he gasped.

Ridgley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Hoyt held it high out of his reach. Aunt Mary took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise.

“Hoyt! Oh my goodness—Hoyt!”

They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Tom and Ridgley were still in the room. Ridgley wasn’t used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his Chafing stick.

“I want to read that letter,” he said loudly.

“Return it to me,” said Tom furiously, “as it’s mine.”

“Get out, both of you,” croaked Uncle Hoyt, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope.

Tom didn’t move.

“RETURN MY LETTER!” he shouted.

“Let me see it!” demanded Ridgley.

“OUT!” roared Uncle Hoyt, and he grabbed both Tom and Ridgley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. Tom and Ridgley promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Ridgley won, so Tom lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor.

“Hoyt,” Aunt Mary was saying in a quivering voice, “look at the address—how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You don’t think they’re watching the house?”

“Watching—spying—they could be following us,” muttered Uncle Hoyt wildly.

“But what should we do, Hoyt? Should we write back? Tell them we don’t want—”

Tom could see Uncle Hoyt’s shiny black shoes pacing up and down the kitchen.

“No,” he said finally. “No, we’ll ignore it. If they don’t get an answer...Yes, that’s best...we won’t do anything...

“But—”

“I’m not having one in the house, Mary! Didn’t we swear when we took him in we’d stamp out that dangerous nonsense?”

That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Hoyt did something he’d never done before; he visited Tom in his cupboard.

“Who sent my letter?” said Tom, the moment Uncle Hoyt had appeared in front of the door.

“No one. It was addressed to you by mistake,” said Uncle Hoyt shortly. “I have burned it.”

“It was not a mistake,” started Tom angrily, “it had my cupboard on it.”

“SILENCE!” yelled Uncle Hoyt, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He took a few deep breaths and then forced his face into an extremely strained smile.

“Er—Tom—about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking...you’re really getting a bit big for it...we feel it might be nice if you moved into Ridgley’s second bedroom.”

“Why?” said Tom, thinking that there had to be some sort of catch to this.

“Don’t ask questions!” snapped his uncle. “Take this stuff upstairs, now.”

The Rigbys’ house had four bedrooms: one for Uncle Hoyt and Aunt Mary, one for visitors (usually Uncle Hoyt’s sister, Mae), one where Ridgley slept, and one where Ridgley kept all the toys and things that wouldn’t fit into his first bedroom. It only took Tom a single trip upstairs to move everything he owned from the cupboard to this room. He sat down on the bed and stared around him.

Nearly everything in the room was broken—there was the month-old video camera lying on top of a small, working tank Ridgley had once driven over the next door neighbor’s dog and Ridgley’s first-ever television set, which he’d put his foot through when his favorite program had been canceled, was in the corner.

There was a large birdcage, which had once held a parrot that Ridgley had swapped at school for a real air rifle, which was up on a shelf with the end all bent because Ridgley had sat on it.

Other shelves were full of books. They were the only things in the room that looked as though they’d never been touched. Tom felt a slight excitement over this, as he’d never really be allowed to learn at the Rigbys’ and this was a brilliant opportunity to start.

From downstairs came the sound of Ridgley bawling at his mother, I don’t want him in there...I need that room...make him get out....”

Tom sighed and stretched out on the bed. Yesterday he’d have given anything to be up here. Today, even with the books, he’d rather be back in his cupboard with that letter than up here without it.

Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Ridgley was in shock. He’d screamed, whacked his father with his Chafings’ stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother, and thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still didn’t have his room back.

Tom was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he’d had the foresight to open the letter in the hallway. Uncle Hoyt and Aunt Mary kept shooting each other dark looks.

When the mail arrived, Uncle Hoyt, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Tom, made Ridgley go and get it. They heard him banging things with his Chafings’ stick all the way down the hall.

Then he shouted, “There’s another one! ‘Mr. T. Gaunt, The Smallest Bedroom, 7 Pricket Drive—’“

With a strangled cry, Uncle Hoyt leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, Tom right behind him. Uncle Hoyt had to wrestle Ridgley to the ground to get the letter from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Tom had leaped onto Uncle Hoyt’s neck and wrapped his arms around his neck.

After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the Chafings’ stick, Uncle Hoyt straightened up, gasping for breath, with Tom’s letter clutched in his hand.

“Go to your cupboard—I mean, your bedroom,” he gasped at Tom.

“Ridgley—go—just go.”

Tom walked round and round his new room. Someone knew he had moved out of his cupboard and they seemed to know he hadn’t received his first letter. Surely that meant they’d try again? And this time he’d make sure they didn’t fail. He had a plan.

The alarm clock he’d repaired rang at six o’clock the next morning. Tom turned it off quickly and dressed silently. He couldn’t wake the Rigbys. He stole downstairs without turning on any of the lights.

He was going to wait for the postman on the corner of Pricket Drive and get the letters for number seven first. His heart hammered as he crept across the dark hall toward the front door—

Tom leapt into the air; he’d trodden on something bony and squashy on the doormat—something alive!

Lights clicked on upstairs and to his horror Tom realized that the squashy something had been his uncle’s face. Uncle Hoyt had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Tom didn’t do exactly what he’d been trying to do.

He shouted at Tom for about half an hour and then told him to go and make a cup of tea. Tom shuffled miserably off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle Hoyt’s lap.

Tom could see three letters addressed in green ink. He figured he had nothing to lose if he tried again.

I want—” he began, but Uncle Hoyt was tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes. Uncle Hoyt didn’t go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot.

“See,” he explained to Aunt Mary through a mouthful of nails, “if they can’t deliver them they’ll just give up.”

“I don’t think that’ll work, Hoyt.”

“Oh, these people’s minds work in strange ways, Mary, they’re not like you and me,” said Uncle Hoyt, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Mary had just brought him.

On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Tom. As they couldn’t go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom.

Uncle Hoyt stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed “Tiptoe through the Tulips” as he worked, and jumped at small noises.

On Saturday, things began to get out of hand—at least, if the whole situation wasn’t out of hand already. Twenty-four letters to Tom found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Mary through the living room window.

While Uncle Hoyt made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Mary shredded the letters in her food processor.

“Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?” Ridgley asked Tom in amazement.

On Sunday morning, Uncle Hoyt sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy.

“No post on Sundays,” he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, “no damn letters today—”

It seemed he’d spoken too soon, because right then, something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. The next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Rigbys ducked, but Tom crawled on the floor, trying to grab one.

“Out! OUT!”

Right as Tom had been about to catch a letter, Uncle Hoyt seized Tom around the waist and threw him into the hall.

When Aunt Mary and Ridgley had run out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Hoyt slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.

“That does it,” said Uncle Hoyt, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts out of his mustache at the same time. “I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We’re going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!”

He looked murderous, even with half his mustache missing, so no one dared argue. Ten minutes later they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding toward the highway.

Ridgley was sniffling in the back seat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag.

They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Mary didn’t dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Hoyt would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while. “Shake them off...shake them off,” he would mutter whenever he did this.

They didn’t stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Ridgley was howling. He’d never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he’d missed five television programs he’d wanted to see, and he’d never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.

Uncle Hoyt stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the

outskirts of a big city. Ridgley and Tom shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Ridgley snored but Tom stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering what would happen next.

They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.

“‘Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. T. Gaunt? I got about an ‘undred of these at the front desk.”

She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:

Mr. T. Gaunt

Room 17

Railview Hotel

Cokeworth

Tom made a grab for the letter but Uncle Hoyt knocked his hand out of the way. The woman looked suspiciously at him.

“I’ll take them,” said Uncle Hoyt, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.

Wouldn’t it be better just to go home, dear?” Aunt Mary suggested timidly, hours later, but Uncle Hoyt didn’t seem to hear her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off they went again.

The same thing happened in the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.

“Daddy’s gone mad, hasn’t he?” Ridgley asked Aunt Mary dully late that afternoon. Uncle Hoyt had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared.

It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Ridgley sniveled.

“It’s Monday,” he told his mother. “The Great Humberto’s on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television. “

Uncle Hoyt came back with a smile. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn’t answer Aunt Mary when she asked what he’d bought.

“Found the perfect place!” he said. “Come on! Everyone out!”

It was very cold outside the car. Uncle Hoyt was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was certain, there was no television in there.

“Storm forecast for tonight!” said Uncle Hoyt gleefully, clapping his hands together. “And this gentleman has kindly agreed to lend us his boat!”

The gentleman in question was a toothless old man who came ambling up to them, pointing, with what looked to Tom like a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-gray water below them.

“I’ve already got us some rations,” said Uncle Hoyt, “so all aboard!”

It was freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what seemed like hours they reached the rock, where Uncle Hoyt, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house.

Inside, it was horrid; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.

Uncle Hoyt’s rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shriveled up.

“Could do with some of those letters now, eh?” he said cheerfully.

He was in a very good mood. Obviously he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver mail and Tom agreed, though the thought didn’t cheer him up at all.

As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Aunt Mary found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Ridgley on the moth-eaten sofa.

She and Uncle Hoyt went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Tom was left to find the softest bit of floor he could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Tom couldn’t sleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger. Ridgley’s snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight.

The lighted dial of Ridgley’s watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Tom it would be twelve in ten minutes’ time. He lay and watched the next day tick nearer and where the letter writer was now.

Five minutes to go. Tom heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn’t going to fall in, although he might be warmer if it did.

Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in Pricket Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that he’d be able to steal one somehow.

Three minutes to go. Was that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that?

Two minutes to go. What was that funny crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea?

One minute to go and he’d be eleven. Thirty seconds...twenty-nine…twenty-eight….

Twenty...nineteen…eighteen….

Ten...nine…eight—maybe he’d wake Ridgley up, just to annoy him—three…

Two…

One…

The whole shack shivered and Tom sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.


End file.
